


take one step closer

by pyrophane



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: Bodyswap, Canon Compliant, Light Pining, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, The World's Second Briefest Jun Cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-20 02:27:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17013831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane
Summary: Xukun looks at Yanjun in his body. Yanjun looks back at Xukun inhisbody.“We need to tell the group,” Xukun says, at the same time Yanjun hisses, “We cannot tellanyone.”





	take one step closer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartstringtheory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstringtheory/gifts).



> greetings beloved heartcondition.... guess who ;) thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this year incredible, i love you & i hope you enjoy this <3 happy yuletide!!!
> 
> timeline-wise, this is set sometime just before the thxwithlove tour but please don't pay too much attention, the details are fuzzy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ****“This has got to be a dream,” says Xukun’s voice, from Xukun’s mouth, with a flat numbness Xukun didn’t know his throat was capable of affecting. But here the evidence is: his own body standing like a limp marionnette in front of him, dead-fish gleam to the eyes, the kind that gives him embarrassing flashbacks to the agonising adolescent despair he tried to leave behind in America.

If there was ever a time for existential angst, though, now would probably be it. Looking at himself from a vantage point outside himself sends vertigo stabbing through his temples if he thinks about it for longer than five seconds.

For some reason—getting into character or whatever—the answer Xukun lands on is, “Do you dream about me very often?” The delivery is so half-hearted they both cringe. It’s practically performance art.

The shock of opening his mouth and hearing somebody else’s voice come out still hasn’t worn off, disorients him so badly when the mental reconciliation hits that he has to blink a few times for his vision to refocus. On himself. This is ridiculous. But he didn't undergo trial by survival show three separate times for nothing, and discomfort is easy enough to strangle in its tracks.

“Stealing my body _and_ my lines, I see how it is,” comes the muttered response, confirming that it is, in fact, Yanjun in there. That’s a small relief—at least it’s only the two of them tangled up in whatever this is.

Xukun looks at Yanjun in his body. Yanjun looks back at Xukun in _his_ body.

“We need to tell the group,” Xukun says, at the same time Yanjun hisses, “We cannot tell _anyone._ ”

They blink at each other. Surprise looks strange on his own face, Xukun thinks, or maybe it’s just the fact of somebody else wearing it, the expression filtered through a prism and diffracted into something nearly unrecognisable.

“You first,” Yanjun says.

“We have to tell the others?” Xukun says. He doesn’t intend for it to come out like a question, but it's a day for wrong-footedness, so he lets the lapse slide. “So we can… figure out how to deal with this?”

“They would never believe us,” Yanjun says darkly.

“How are we going to be able to pretend to be each other? Convincingly.” Zhangjing has known Yanjun for years; Xukun has a beautiful duck-egg chance of fooling him, only managed to escape their shared room in the morning by evacuating the premises  before Zhangjing woke up and relocating to a locked bathroom to have what he considered a pretty justified freakout considering the circumstances. “We have interviews coming up. Concerts.” Muscle memory is a pain to rewrite; the grimace that twists Yanjun’s mouth says it all. They’ve just rejigged all the choreo to work with the nine of them and Xukun isn’t particularly keen on the prospect of going through that again, let alone in secret.

“Oh god,” Yanjun says, the colour leaching out of his face. “ _I_ have to be the nation’s centre?”

There’s a small, petty flare of resentment that Xukun extinguishes immediately. “It’ll be fine,” he says, vigorously redirecting the feeling to encouragement. “You used to be the Trainee18 leader, right? That’s—I mean, it’s more experience than me.”

Yanjun blinks. “How did you know?”

“Didn’t you say it? On the show?”

“But you weren’t—you watched the show?”

Disconcerted again—though it’s ambiguous whether he really ever _stopped_ since he woke up in Yanjun’s body—Xukun says, “You didn’t?”  

“Not yet…? When did you even find the time?”

“During filming breaks,” Xukun says vaguely. “It’s not important. We also need to plan for if we never... switch back—”

“Please do not jinx it. No offense,” Yanjun adds. “I like your face, but I do like mine better.”

“None taken,” Xukun says. Careful, again.

There are some people Xukun would have a decent chance of plausibly imitating, but Yanjun is not one of them. Neither their social nor competitive circles had significantly overlapped, back on the show. Yanjun had the rest of the Banana trainees as a buffer, unintentional or not, an insularity that telescoped down rather than expanded its borders the way the Yuehua clique had.  

What he _is_ used to, though, is performing a more perfect version of himself, the one capable of fitting the roles of Nine Percent’s centre, Nine Percent’s leader. Yanjun’s narrative isn’t one he knows how to carry out, but he thinks he could try. It’s only what he’s supposed to do as a leader anyway, an understanding of his members as close to complete as it’s possible to get. Near enough from there to another performance, another skin to pull over himself, inhabit, this one more literal than usual. 

“Let’s just—” Yanjun scrubs a hand over his face, which is Xukun’s face. “Let’s just take it one day at a—holy _fuck_ Zhu Zhengting where the fuck did you come from?”

Xukun twists around so sharply he nearly strains something in his neck. Zhengting’s chin is propped on his arms folded over the top of the couch in the living room, watching the two of them, placid, unreadable.

He swallows down the reflexive upwell of words. _Hi,_ he thinks. _I am Lin Yanjun and this is my coworker-slash-person-I-went-through-a-three-month-pressure-cooker-with and we are having a perfectly normal conversation in the kitchen, nothing out of the ordinary at all._

Being around Zhengting always seems to shunt him onto the defensive, half a step behind beat. It’s lucky Zhengting is the type of person who slingshots at random between uncannily perceptive and utterly oblivious, and rarely the former around Xukun. Or more specifically the type of person who only pays attention to things like his exclusive circle of favourites, which Xukun is pretty sure doesn’t include him. That suits him just fine. They’re colleagues, before they’re friends, or anything else.

“Hi!” Zhengting says. Tilts his head and smiles, totally shameless in being caught out. And longing closes its fist around Xukun’s heart and squeezes, the tenderness flaring up and subsiding with an old-bruise ease that suggests Yanjun’s body is well-accustomed to the feeling, and—isn’t that something. “I was napping.”

Now is not the time to interrogate it. Xukun glances at Yanjun, finds him looking back. Anything tentative about him swallowed up by alarm.

“Okay,” Yanjun says, slicing clean through the thicket of silence. “So, uh, how much of that exactly did you overhear?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zhengting is more unruffled about the situation than he really ought to be. In fact, he displays a distinct lack of ruffledness that Xukun is almost suspicious of, but it’s not like he has the jurisdiction to say anything about what Zhengting is like with any kind of authority. Knowing him is still a work in progress, too, for all the closeness the producers tried to set up between them early on. The vicinity asymptotic. Sometimes that distance doesn’t seem so insurmountable, its closing an inevitability of form; other times Xukun thinks he really will never understand Zhengting. The gap always there, whether himself in his own skin or somebody else’s, no matter how infinitesimal.

“Apparently this kind of thing happens all the time in Korea,” Zhengting is saying, all airy. “That’s what I’ve heard. I have a friend who has a friend whose group was just going through this earlier this year. Or not his group? Whatever, it was complicated.”

“ _I’ve_ never heard of anything like this,” Yanjun says.

“Do you know how to switch back?” Xukun says.

“I am a fount of all-knowing wisdom,” Zhengting says to Yanjun. He turns to Xukun. “Give me one moment.”

Politely, Xukun fixes his gaze on a point just over Zhengting’s shoulder while Zhengting hoists himself up onto the back of the couch and fishes his phone out from his pockets, starts typing. Barely half a minute has passed before Zhengting’s phone chimes.

“Junhui says you just have to wait,” Zhengting says, brandishing his phone screen just long enough for Xukun to register a string of cat stickers before he tucks his phone back into his pocket.

“Oh my god, your friend was _Junhui-ge_? Why didn’t you just say so? Also I can’t believe you have notifications on for him but not your own band,” Xukun says.

“Well, Junhui and I have a highly efficient communication via animal sticker system set up right now. Plus he sends me cat pictures and I send him pictures of my favourite Yuehua of the moment, usually Tinbao. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“We could send you cat pictures,” Yanjun says.

“And important information relevant to our group,” Xukun adds.

Zhengting flicks his hand dismissively, like he’s batting the words away. “Anyway, the point is, you two are going to be stuck like this for a while. The one Junhui was telling me about took a week? Two weeks?”

“Great,” Yanjun says dully. “We should start getting into character, then.” His expression turns solemn. “Ge, move out a bit further left in the bridge, the formation looks unbalanced.”

Xukun feels a little like a wilted cabbage leaf. “I don’t call Zhengting _ge,_ ” he says weakly.  

“Then maybe you should start?” Yanjun says.

“No, wait, this is excellent,” Zhengting says, leaning back against the couch. “Give me your best Xukun impression, I’ll rate it.”

“Okay,” Yanjun says. “How’s this?” He shifts his weight onto one leg, tilts his head, holds his index finger across his torso. Xukun recognises the pose and wishes that spontaneous combustion was a phenomenon that could happen at will.

“Why is this happening to me,” Xukun mutters.

Zhengting passes a critical eye over Yanjun. “You look like the kind of person who steals milk powder from supermarkets,” he says.

“What does a milk powder thief even _look like_ ,” Yanjun says. “And this isn’t even _my_ face?”

“Xukun’s face, but your uniquely guilty expression,” Zhengting says. “You’re not going to fool anyone. Xukun doesn’t usually look that suspicious.”

“You’re saying I sometimes look suspicious?” Xukun objects.

“You’re cute,” Zhengting coos, reaching over to pinch his cheek, the way he might for one of the Yuehuas, and Xukun bats his hand away, heart suddenly strung tight as a clothesline. Undeterred, Zhengting repurposes the forward momentum, throws an arm around Xukun’s neck, the other around Yanjun’s. “It’ll be fine,” Zhengting continues, breezy. “You two aren’t as different as you think.”

Despite Zhengting’s optimism, keeping up the pretense all day is exhausting; Xukun can’t let his focus slip for even a second in case he forgets to respond to Yanjun’s name or accidentally responds to his own, attention rigidly grounded in the present, as if he’s back on the show, cameras never sleeping. Ends up circumventing the problem by avoiding human contact as much as possible, inventing excuses to keep his distance from Zhangjing and Linong especially. They start intensive rehearsals for the next leg of the tour in two days, though, so this strategy isn’t sustainable. His head feels cottony, blown out. He’s out of practice with the stringent self-surveillance the show demanded from him, lulling back into complacency so easily, no physical trace of the discipline he had just months ago.

“Hey, is everything okay?” Zhangjing says, later at night when they’re both in their shared room. Clearly Xukun wasn’t as successful in conning him as he’d hoped. “You’ve been out of it all day.”

“I think I’m coming down with something,” Xukun mumbles.

“You always do,” Zhangjing says fondly. “Though—Lin Yanjun, if the next words out of your mouth are _with lovesickness_ you should carefully consider how much longer you would like to enjoy the privilege of being alive.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Xukun says, scrunching his eyes shut, because there is no way he can maintain the ruse of being Yanjun while looking Zhangjing directly in the eye.

Zhangjing sighs. There’s the light sound of footsteps, and then a cool hand settles onto his forehead. Xukun makes a mental note to leave him some ginseng tea, later.

“Doesn’t feel like a fever,” Zhangjing says. The concern in his voice eases off, along with his hand. “You probably just need more sleep. Spend less time playing Arena of Valor on your phone, you don’t even like the game.”

Xukun didn’t know Yanjun was playing, wonders why he hasn’t told any of the others. Casts around for something neutral enough to avoid rousing Zhangjing’s suspicion to say, settles on, “Sometimes I can’t sleep?”

“Well, would you like to be unconscious? What if I could help you?”

“Message received,” Xukun says hastily, pulling the covers up around his ears. Zhangjing laughs, pats his head, heads back to his own bed. Flicks the light switch off, and though Xukun’s eyes are still closed the afterimage of the light bleeding through flashes across the backs of his eyelids in fuse lines, before it too burns itself out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Xukun opens his eyes the next morning he doesn’t even have the luxury of a moment of reprieve where he can delude himself into believing this has all been an unnecessarily elaborate and unpleasant fever dream, because Yanjun’s eyesearingly orange blankets are tangled in knots around him, partway to suffocation. Unmistakeable, and also life-threatening; he doesn’t usually move around in his sleep when he’s in his own body, has no idea how Yanjun manages to extricate himself from this mess in a timely fashion every day.  

Zhangjing’s bed is empty—Xukun reaches back through the molasses of memory and fishes out the recollection of an early schedule; he should’ve woken earlier to see him off, leaderly duties or, he supposes, best friend duties. His shin bangs against the side of the dresser on his way out and he winces, leans down to clutch his calf in both hands, half in apology to Yanjun. Straightens up as soon as it’s manageable, before anybody sees.

No sooner has the door closed behind him than Yanjun materialises out of absolutely nowhere in front of him, looming over Xukun with a hunted expression. He wraps a hand around his elbow, pulls him off to the side. Linkai emerges from his room, makes brief, uncomfortable eye contact with Xukun, seems to decide whatever’s happening is none of his business and gives them a wide berth on his way to the kitchen.

“So I know I was the one who said we can’t tell anyone, but seriously, I cannot keep this up,” Yanjun hisses, right into his ear. “I said, like, five words total to Ziyi this morning, and he was already all, ‘bro, are you feeling okay?’ It’s scary. He actually has a sixth sense for you or something.”

“Okay,” Xukun says. “Let’s just—try get through the day intact first. If you have any ideas on how to tell everyone…”

“It’s fine,” Yanjun says. It will almost certainly not be fine. “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”

Linong and Justin go out ice skating together, and Zhengting drags Yanjun to a shopping centre, so day two of the avoiding game goes a little smoother with half the group absent. By the end of the day, there’s still no sign that they might organically switch back into their own bodies anytime soon, so Xukun calls an emergency group meeting, or more specifically Yanjun does as Xukun. Everyone files into the dining room, Zhengting raising his eyebrows at Yanjun as he passes him, smile curling the corners of his mouth.

“So what’s up?” Linkai leans back in his chair, hands interlaced behind his head.

Yanjun’s gaze darts to Xukun, pained, a chronic kind. There’s no other way to say it. “Long story short, something happened and Yanjun and I swapped bodies, so I’m actually Cai Xukun and he’s Lin Yanjun,” Xukun reels off, in one long breath. “Any questions?”

A beat of silence that drags out into two, three, four. Zhangjing’s eyebrows climb and climb, disappearing behind his fringe. Linong swivels around like he’s scanning for hidden cameras. “Are we filming for something?” he says uncertainly. “Did I forget?”

“It really is me,” Yanjun protests. “As in me, Yanjun—”

Chengcheng narrows his eyes, squinting blearily through his glasses at Xukun, and then at Yanjun. He tucks his hands into his elbows and declares, “I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, I believe it,” Justin says. There’s a shrewd, thoughtful gleam in his eyes that Xukun does not like the look of at all, mirrored by Linkai on his other side.

“I can prove I’m who I say I am!” Yanjun says. “Zhangjing, I contributed the throat candies for your birthday last year, and also remember the time we were watching that horror movie with Chaoze and Dinghao, and you—”

“Alright, alright, you can stop there,” Zhangjing interrupts, going light pink. “If this is a setup, though…”

“I believe you,” Ziyi says. He looks directly at Xukun like he’s actually seeing him, under the flesh veneer of Yanjun. “This isn’t Kunkun’s brand of prank, anyway.”

“They’re telling the truth,” Zhengting finally says, from where he’s draped over Ziyi. Grins widely. “I’ll vouch for it. It’s an industry thing over in Korea apparently, it just happens. Like a rite of passage? No cure, before you ask, we’ll just have to weather it out.”

“I still don’t believe it,” Chengcheng grumbles. “You’re all in on it, aren’t you? You can’t fool me that easily.”

“Trust me,” Xukun says lowly. Chengcheng’s attention snaps to him, wary but less shut off, waiting. “We start concert rehearsals tomorrow, I wouldn’t pull something like this when…”

Chengcheng’s mouth thins. He knows exactly what it took to get to this point, after all, how fickle, how flimsy everything they’ve garnered is; Xukun knows Chengcheng’s type, which is his own type, hoarder of little luxuries, tenacious with dreams and bright things, hyperconscious of the debts racked up to reach them, and it’s why he can pinpoint the moment Chengcheng accepts.

“Fine,” Chengcheng says. “I’ll bite. So what are we gonna do about it?”

“Now isn’t that a question,” Yanjun says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually settling into Yanjun’s identity for the immediate future presents a whole host of unforeseen problems, such as Yanjun’s inimitable repository of cold jokes, which Xukun does not have access to, though he’s definitely heard the matchstick-river one enough times to reel it off by heart. This particular issue culminates in him trawling despondently through Baidu forums at three in the morning, camera roll full of screenshots for later perusal, until it occurs to him that he could just ask Yanjun. If they even had the kind of relationship where Xukun _could,_ wholeheartedly and without shame, ask Yanjun for anything, but that’s a level of familiarity he doesn’t think they’re at. He’d be willing to try for it, if Yanjun gave any indication of receptiveness, but Xukun hasn’t quite managed to feel out where the boundary between courtesy and sincerity turns on a knife’s edge, when it comes to Yanjun.

“I’m always sincere,” Xukun says, out loud, just to hear it in Yanjun’s voice. It does sound like something he would say. Method acting. He cracks a smile.

“Talking to yourself?” Zhengting strides into the room, casts a proprietary eye around the place.

“Rehearsing Yanjunisms,” Xukun corrects, standing up.

Yanjun isn’t that much shorter than Xukun, certainly not enough to represent any major shift in perspective, but now he has to look up a little at Zhengting and then he’s painfully aware of the body he inhabits, grounded in the limbs which are not his own, phantoms given substantiality.

Zhengting props his leg up against the top of the dresser, effortlessly leaning forward into a perfect vertical split. The cuff of his sweatpants falls away from his ankle, revealing a pale swatch of skin.

“Was there something you wanted,” Xukun says.

“Nope,” Zhengting says cheerfully. “Just here to bother you.”

“Thanks for being upfront about it, at least.”

“Anytime.”

The ensuing silence is not exactly comfortable, but Xukun waits him out. Zhengting drums his fingers absently against his knee, then switches legs.

“Is your waist still bothering you?” Xukun asks.

“It’s fine,” Zhengting says.

It clearly isn’t, though the lie is not unexpected—Zhengting is too stubborn to ever admit to losing a battle, least of all one against himself. Xukun can almost feel a phantom of the ache, muted, crackling like static, humming beneath the skin of his waist like an old injury of his own. Actually, it could very well be; it’s not like Xukun knows Yanjun’s history in enough detail to know for sure.

“Well, if you ever run out of muscle patches, let me know,” Xukun says, trying for levity. He can’t help floundering whenever he runs up against the kind of moment that could veer into vulnerability, hates not knowing precisely where he stands in relation to Zhengting, whether their playing fields are level. For all Zhengting’s transparency, it’s impossible for Xukun to know if he’s reading too much, too little into him, the kind of openness that blinds, sunlight off salt flats, like the ones his host family in California had taken him to see, once. That unknowable expanse. So much light it obscured.

“You’d let me use your precious stock of medicinal supplies for free?” Zhengting says, lifting his leg off the dresser and collapsing gracefully backwards onto the bed.

“Discounted, maybe,” Xukun says. The teasing comes easily when it’s with Zhengting, now, a routine he’s picked up since the show. “You’d still have to trade me something.”

“Aren’t we friends?” Zhengting says, pursing his lips. Xukun’s heart ratchets into his throat. “What happened to _what’s yours is mine,_ and all that?”

Distance, closeness. Zhengting’s smile is coy, all affectation, no real guile. Impossible to deny.

“You drive such a hard bargain,” Xukun says, giving in. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Yuehuas are away at a company photoshoot, so the dorms are a little emptier than usual tonight, though it’s rare to have the complete group all present on premises at any given moment, anyway. There’s fewer of them now, compared to the show, but everything feels dispersed rather than condensed down, the focus tipping outwards. It leaves Xukun a little tongue-tied sometimes. Hard to make inroads on knowing people in greater depth when they aren’t around.

“Early night?” Yanjun scuffs a socked foot along the base of the doorframe, hands clasped behind his back. The energies of it all are perplexingly shifty; Yanjun clearly knows how to manage his own presence but not Xukun’s. “You’re getting old, Lin Yanjun.”

“Throwing yourself under the bus there, I see,” Xukun says.

“Ha! Just making the most of my current youthful existence and all that.” Yanjun leans against the doorframe, looking so supremely out-of-place Xukun cringes in sympathy.

“You can come in if you want,” Xukun offers. “It’s your room.”

“Hey, just giving you space,” Yanjun says.

“I appreciate it,” Xukun says, “but seeing as we are already in each other’s bodies, I think we might be a bit past that.”

Yanjun steps inside. Sits down on the edge of Zhangjing’s bed. “It’s—well, we weren’t really the closest before. On the show.”

“No,” Xukun says slowly, like casting a hand out to feel for something in the dark, a rope lowered into a well. “I guess we weren’t.”

Someone opens a door somewhere across the corridor, a warm spill of light breaching the doorway before vanishing again. Bright enough, briefly, to burn.

“You seemed…” Yanjun hesitates. “Kind of lonely.”

Was it lonely, at the top of the pyramid? Of course, but exceptionalism necessitates isolation. It seemed like an easy tradeoff to make, at the time. He wanted to win, and then he did, and everything along the way had to be worth it, because the alternative would be unthinkable. Playing catch-up now feels like too little, too late, but he _cares_ , always did, never wanted the distance between seats to ossify. Kept trying. Will keep trying. Two years may never be enough, but it’s what he’d known he would get, his name on the contract even before the show began a tangible tether to everyone else, temporary substitute for a familiarity that will hopefully arrive soon, if it hasn’t already.  

It’s a wistful thought. Dangerous, when it’s built on the foundations of hourglass sand, sieving out. Longing is so hard to shake, once it grows roots, sets in. He’s done this before, didn’t learn the first time, probably won’t now. Knows what’s coming, can’t bring himself to push it away or hold it off, not when it comes to this.

In the dark, the fine details of Yanjun’s expression are obscured, impossible to ascertain. All the ways in which something as familiar to him as his own face could become unknown once again. Terrifying, comforting. Those distances mutable. Ensconced in somebody else’s skin, maybe that’s what makes it less difficult for Xukun to open his mouth and admit, “I was.”

There’s a pause. The night fragile like spun glass where it’s contained between the two of their bodies. Yanjun says, “You don’t have to answer, but—are you still?”

Xukun considers it. “No,” he says, truthfully. Surprises himself by the weight behind it.

“Then I’m glad.” Yanjun’s voice sounds unbelievably kind. “I tried to shut everyone out at the start, too, you know. I thought it was the smart thing to do, save myself and everyone else some pain. You can’t get hurt if you keep your distance, right? But it wasn’t sustainable. And I don’t regret it. I don’t think I would have regretted it, even if I hadn’t made it in. Wow, this is so embarrassing to say. Let’s pretend this conversation never happened.”

He’s giving Xukun an out. Yanjun was wrong when he said leadership didn’t suit him, back on the show, Xukun thinks. He would have made a good leader in his own right. The instinct of self-preservation still rears its head, but it’s only instinct. Rewritable, with time.

“I don’t regret it either,” Xukun says. Acknowledgement, reciprocation. He watches the corner of Yanjun’s mouth lift, just barely discernible, the understanding received.

The ache below his ribs like a knot of roots unfurling. Digging their way in. Holding fast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What will you do?” Zhengting says. He folds his legs into a butterfly stretch and leans forward over his feet, the plane of his back unfairly parallel to the floor, and his next words come out muffled. “If you never switch back?”

“Does it matter?” Xukun says. He straightens up from his own stretch, winces at the firecracker noise of his joints resettling. Yanjun really needs to spend more time working on flexibility, though Xukun’s own body probably doesn’t fare much better in this arena.

Learning Yanjun’s parts for the choreography isn’t as taxing as Xukun was prepared for it to be, especially since he doesn’t have to keep it under wraps, but it’s still hours of extra practice at the studio. Mostly it’s Yanjun who stays back to practise with him; sometimes it’s Ziyi. Tonight, or more accurately this morning, it’s Zhengting.

“Yes,” Zhengting says firmly. Xukun’s eyes flick to him in surprise. “It’s _your_ body. And I know you do care, even if you wish you didn’t.”

“... Yeah,” Xukun says. “I didn’t know you…” _paid enough attention to tell_ evaporates down the back of his throat, the moment he realises how pathetic it sounds.

A body should just be a vessel with a function. Something to be directed towards a purpose. But he still wants his own back, the cartography of skin which he recognises because he lived through it, its identity twenty years in the making.

Zhengting extends his legs into a middle split, lifts his torso off the ground, catches Xukun’s eye. “You didn’t know I what?”

Xukun hurriedly assembles his limbs into some vague form of stretch as a pretext for avoiding Zhengting’s gaze. “It’s nothing,” he says. Hidden by his hair, the tips of his ears burn.

“Aww,” Zhengting grumbles. “Why can’t you tell me? I wanna know.”

“It really is nothing,” Xukun insists. “I would tell you if it was important!” What a magnificent lie. “It’s just that—you’re right.”

“I always am.” Zhengting sniffs. Easily placated. Xukun wonders if he would have pressed, if it was Justin or Chengcheng, but it’s no good dwelling on that brand of hypothetical. Yuehua is Yuehua. He isn’t here to play catchup.

It’s close to dawn. The watered-down light through the doorway inches across the floorboards like frost. As if eventually it could lengthen enough to reach the two of them, find them adjacent. Moving closer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part of Xukun’s high school basketball team training regimen back in America involved both speed and endurance drills, found them sharing real estate with the track team at ungodly hours of the morning, shivering in their tracksuits, a loose huddle off to the side of the field. Everyone liked to complain about the brutal sets of suicides the coach always put them through, Xukun included, but the endpoints were visible, the stretch of track between them and the starting line finite, measured out.

So Xukun knows distances, how to close them. Each step a goalpost, end in sight, concrete even when wrung out by an exhaustion that wouldn’t lift for years to come, though he had no way of knowing that, not yet. But anything could be bridged. And every time he came back to the starting line, all there was left to do was to beat his time on the next round.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tour opens and the stylists decide on an exciting gradient of medium to dark browns for everyone, nixing any potential sartorial benefits from not being in his own body. Putting his Yanjun impression to the public test is almost anticlimactic. The Lin Yanjun who exists on stage is larger than life, contours less defined and thus easier to step into, and everything’s washed indistinct by the spotlights, anyway.

It’s far from the first stage he’s ever stood on, looked out from over the sea of upturned lit-up faces, but the rush never loses its potency. So much of it balanced on luck, circumstance, other people’s hard work and devotion, mountains of debts he can’t ever repay. He’ll never stop being grateful. Yanjun must feel the same.

Backstage afterwards, even away from the cameras, it’s Yanjun who calls them together, gathers them up, and Xukun goes. So he’s still looking at Yanjun while the rest of the group file out towards the side door where the minibus is waiting, which is how he catches Yanjun watching Zhengting when Zhengting’s attention is occupied by leaning over to whisper something in Justin’s ear, looking at Zhengting like he’s a riddle he’s trying to solve, a natural wonder, a paradox, something utterly bewildering and beautiful at the same time, and the pattern slots into place, stone hitting the bottom of a well. The expression transforms him. Of course he notices; it’s Xukun’s own face irradiated with that astonished fascination. Justin laughs, bright and clear, and Zhengting swats his shoulder, loops his arm through the crook of Justin’s elbow, pulls him out past the curtains towards the green glow of the exit sign.

“Zhengting,” Xukun says. It’s just him and Yanjun left in the waiting area. On the slice of stage visible from here, staff start dismantling equipment, stowing things away. “You _like_ him.”

Pure horror flashes over Yanjun’s face like a lighthouse beacon. “I do not?”

“Okay,” Xukun says. “So the way you look at—”

“That’s just my resting face,” Yanjun hisses. “And—I can’t believe you of all people have the audacity to bring this up—”

Xukun chokes. “What do you mean, _me of all people_?”

“What do you _think_ I mean? Oh my god. I seriously cannot believe we are having this conversation. I would never say anything. I have decided to never say anything ever again.”

“No, seriously—”

Yanjun must take regard of the note of panic threading Xukun’s voice, because he sighs and claps a hand down on his shoulder. “You are kind of transparent,” Yanjun says. “Like, not in any way obvious or direct enough for anyone to notice except maybe your psychically-bonded buddy Ziyi, or Justin since he probably sold his soul for freaky perception powers—”

“Including you that’s an entire third of the group?”

“—plus the signals are mixed since you’re temporarily me and I’m you,” Yanjun continues. “But that’s how _I_ could tell. Of course I know what I look like when I’m…” The colour vacates his face so rapidly it’s like a plug pulled. He looks like he wants nothing more than for the earth to crack open and swallow him whole. Xukun echoes the sentiment.

They look at each other, immediately look away. Yanjun collapses into one of the plastic chairs from _Firewalking,_ like his strings have been cut. “... Well,” Xukun says, mortified. “This is, um. I… don’t know what to say.”

“This is awful,” Yanjun mumbles. “Imagine having actual feelings. In fact I might be allergic? I think I’m breaking out in a rash. I was going to say _actual feelings for Zhu Zhengting_ but I think just cutting it off there works too.”

Hearing it said out loud makes Xukun feel like punching through the ground himself to escape the room. He regrets ever bringing it up. “Let’s… agree to never talk about this again,” Xukun says.

“Denial is always the smartest option,” Yanjun says fervently.  

The fear that comes spidering up the back of his neck then isn’t even about trust. It’s the same person for both of them; Xukun just wishes he didn’t know. You want to look into somebody, of course you have to let them look back. This is why he kept away in the first place, the terror of vulnerability when it could be staved off indefinitely instead, though he’d wanted to be seen, hoped for it, even, despite himself, something in the marrow singing out to be known.

It’s like an infection, a second heart in his ribs. A kind of longing that bites right through his hand. Strikes down to the quick. Severs the whole thing clean off. He ran so far from himself he landed in somebody else’s body, and here he is, still trying to escape. Eventually he’ll come full circle. Until then—

“They’re probably wondering where we are,” Xukun says, instead of answering. Yanjun starts, like he’s remembered where they are, gravity catching up to him.

Xukun sticks out a hand. Yanjun takes it, fingers warm, unsure. Lets himself be tugged to his feet. Doesn’t let go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two in the morning finds Xukun sleepless, still hopped up on adrenaline to the point of mild nausea, so he gets dressed and finds himself back at the dance studio downstairs. When he pushes the door open Zhengting glances up from where he’s crouched down, fingers pausing on his shoelaces. He must have already been here for a while, the curve of his neck sheened over, hair damp at the tips.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Xukun says, moving to join him.

Zhengting hums, spine uncurling as he stands up. “You know how it is.”

“No mask today?”

“Forgot to restock, and I don’t like the kind Chengcheng uses.” Zhengting goes to restart the music, and the opening synths to _Ei Ei_ expand into the hollow of the room. Xukun huffs, a surprised laugh. He’d probably still know the steps on his deathbed, feels like it’s coded into him, whichever body he’s in.

Back on the show while they were rehearsing for the big finale stage, running off single-digit hours of sleep over the past week and the fumes of sheer desperation, he and Zhengting and the rest of the top twenty had been waiting their turns in the makeup chairs when Zhengting bent his head towards him and said, quite clearly, into Xukun’s ear, “I hate this song so much.” Xukun knew the feeling; gratitude was hard to keep up in the face of a body on the brink of collapse, the resentment starting to grow teeth, gnaw down.

Now that they’ve cleared the high-water mark, are safe on the other side of it all, there’s room for the gratitude to steep back in, though it’s a tough battle considering how many times he’s heard the song. He doesn’t need to think about the movements, lets instinct and muscle memory carry him through, doesn’t worry about whose exactly it is.

Halfway through the second chorus, Zhengting cuts the speakers off, turns towards him, grabs him by the back of the neck and kisses him. For a moment Xukun is too stunned to do anything but stand there unmoving, before everything comes down like a deluge of icy water over his head and he remembers what to do, hand at the small of Zhengting’s back, mouth parting for his tongue.

A flush glitters over the tops of Zhengting’s cheeks when he pulls away, suddenly shy again, or the embarrassment catching up to him, though he doesn’t let go, thumb pressing into the crease of Xukun’s hip. Xukun’s heartbeat surrounds him like it’s its own separate being, glass enclosure around an animal, the sound punching through his eardrums.

“Is it me?” Xukun says, because he needs to know. “Or is it because I’m—Yanjun, right now—”

Zhengtings eyes are like moons. “I like you,” Zhengting says, plainly. It knocks the breath clean out of Xukun anyway. “You as you, and Yanjun as Yanjun. I knew from the start, remember? I knew who you were. I was just waiting for you to notice.”

“Yanjun—”

“Did I read you wrong? You like him too, don’t you?”

The two of them in the kitchen, Yanjun’s room, backstage, the strange intimacy engineered by the bizarreness of the situation; there’s no getting closer than literally taking over someone else’s body, after all. And even before that: glancing at Yanjun nestled in the cluster of his company’s trainees, a little wistful, absently noting _he’s beautiful._  

“Yeah,” Xukun says, hoarse. “Yeah, I like him.”

“That’s good,” Zhengting says, backing Xukun up against the mirrored wall. “That's good,” he repeats, softer, lower, right by Xukun's mouth, close enough his breath fans over Xukun’s lower lip before he kisses him again, hand against the flat of his stomach, until his head swims and he’s gasping into Zhengting’s mouth.

This time when the kiss breaks, Zhengting’s looking at something in the mirror to Xukun's right, sonic boom of a smile on his face. “Well?” Zhengting calls. Closer to a demand, really. “Are you just going to stand there and watch all day?”

Xukun follows the vector of his line of sight towards Yanjun, who steps through the doorway, neatly closing the door behind himself. “Hey, it’s _my_ body,” Yanjun says. “Shouldn’t I have the right to watch?”

Zhengting rolls his eyes magnificently. “Come here,” he says, and Yanjun obliges, crossing the floor.

“Hi,” Yanjun says. He sticks his hands in his pockets. There’s another jolt of surreal awareness Xukun hasn’t felt since the first day, looking at himself from the outside.

“Hi,” Zhengting says. He twists around, grasps Yanjun’s face in both hands, leans in until their noses are nearly touching, Yanjun's eyes crossing with the effort of focusing on him. “Nice of you to join us.”

“Thanks for having—” Zhengting closes the negligible distance between their mouths and kisses the life out of Yanjun.

Yanjun looks thunderstruck, dazed, before his expression clears and he catches Xukun’s wrist. “Do you—that is… I mean, I don’t like hanging around where I’m not wanted—”

“I want you here,” Xukun says. Surprise, then cautious warmth opens up Yanjun’s face. Does Xukun really look like that when he’s caught out? The expression is terrifyingly telling.

Yanjun releases his wrist, steps in front of Zhengting, pushing Xukun to the ground. “I’ve always wanted to see what it would be like,” Yanjun says, thoughtfully. “Kissing myself.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” Xukun says. He fits a hand to the familiar jawline, thumb over the arch of the cheekbone, looks at Yanjun looking out from his eyes.

Yanjun’s the one who closes the distance first. He kisses straightforwardly, hands gripping Xukun’s hair to angle his head, rill of teeth, not so much fight as assurance.

Something occurs to Xukun and he pulls back for a moment. “Have you ever injured your waist?” Xukun asks.

“I—no? I don’t think so?” Yanjun says. “Why?”

“No reason,” Xukun says, before cupping a hand around the nape of his neck, reeling him back in. He works a hand between their bodies, palming Yanjun through his sweatpants, feels Zhengting fit himself against the line of his back, sink his teeth into the juncture of Xukun’s shoulder and neck, low enough to be hidden by a shirt collar. Zhengting’s hands dip below his waistband, ghost over the clothed outline of his cock and Xukun curls in on himself, swallowing down the embarrassing noises threatening to escape his throat.

“Switch with me,” Zhengting says. There’s the slick sounds of kissing over his head and then Zhengting settles in front of him again.

Zhengting pushes two fingers against the swell of Xukun’s bottom lip, insistent, and as soon as Xukun gets the hint and opens his mouth he hooks them over Xukun’s incisors, pressing down on his tongue. Xukun closes his mouth around them, watches Zhengting’s eyes go half-lidded, cat that caught the canary.

And Xukun’s the one caught. He feels flushed all over, outline of Yanjun’s cock pressing into his hip, Zhengting caging him in from the front. His head falls forward, almost an involuntary motion, and Yanjun puts his mouth to the exposed back of Xukun’s neck.

“You’re so quiet,” Yanjun murmurs into the skin there. “It’s weird. I’m never this quiet.”

Xukun chokes back another noise, muffled around Zhengting’s fingers. Zhengting says, “Well, Kunkun’s at a disadvantage,” and withdraws his hand, yanks Xukun’s pants down past his hips, grinding the heel of his palm against the front of his boxers, and Xukun keens, tries to arch forward into the relief of pressure.

“That’s better,” Yanjun says approvingly.

He feels like a windowpane. Yanjun’s hand wrapped around the side of his throat, thumb right over his pulse point, tilting his head back so Zhengting can kiss him, lick a stripe down to his collarbone.

Zhengting closes his fist around Xukun’s cock. Says, “Let’s get our beloved leader off.”

 

 

 

 

 

  


Waking up in his own bed for the first time in a week makes Xukun start so violently he smacks his knee into the bedpost, but—it’s his knee, his bedpost, and the relief is enough to white out the pain. He looks over at Ziyi’s empty bed; Ziyi’s a perennially early riser, since he likes to go for a run before breakfast. It’s good to be back, the routines he knows by heart.

Justin’s the only person in the kitchen when Xukun walks in, watching something on his phone with earphones in. “Hi, Yanjun-ge,” he says, without looking up.

“Not Yanjun anymore,” Xukun says. “We switched back.”

“Xukun-ge,” Justin corrects, sounding bored. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Xukun says sincerely. Justin does glance up, then, catching Xukun’s eye.

“Oh, it _is_ you,” Justin says. He grins. “Welcome back, nation’s centre.”

One by one the rest of the members file into the kitchen, Ziyi tossing off a _Hey, Kunkun_ in his direction as he picks up a couple of oranges on his way to the blender, before Xukun can even open his mouth. Yanjun slides him a conspiratorial lopsided smile, leaves a seat between them when they sit down. Zhengting is the last person to arrive, even after Chengcheng, the most difficult of them all to rouse in the morning, and when he slips into the seat between Yanjun and Xukun it makes a full table. For once all nine of them are in the same place at the same time. Xukun can’t remember the last time they all sat down for a meal together, the longing for this kind of scene washing up like a tide.

The shortest path through three points is a line. Zhengting slings a proprietary arm around Yanjun’s shoulders, knocks an ankle against Xukun’s under the table. He doesn’t look at either of them, but his eyes crescent, slow. Contact established. Maintained.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> > the junhui zzt mentions is seventeen's jun, and his friend is nct's winwin (the nct members who bodyswapped were ofc jeno and jaemin circa smtown dubai)  
> > i'm on twitter [@juncheolsoo](https://twitter.com/juncheolsoo) and cc [@inheritance](https://curiouscat.me/inheritance)!!


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